Final Fantasy 14 fan soloing the MMO like it's RuneScape's Ironman mode finally finishes a 12-week boss grind thanks to a 6-week grind for 1 healing spell

A resilient Final Fantasy 14 soloist trying to beat the MMO under the most punishing rules he can muster has overcome his biggest obstacle yet by beating one equally resilient Stormblood boss.

Over the past year, Rath Games has been trying to solo the critically acclaimed MMO under rules borrowed from RuneScape's Iron Man mode. You can read our previous chat with Rath to find out how that came to be, but the basics are self-sufficiency over all else – no trading, no party members be they NPC or human, and no quest rewards.

It would be one Stormblood boss called Susano, though, that would prove his biggest challenge yet. The Lord of the Revel is a boss you must topple in a trial to advance the story. It comes with a mechanic that's fairly by the numbers for a team but a nightmare if you're solo.

Essentially, at one point in the fight, Susano slams a giant sword into the arena, tasking one player with holding it and the rest with breaking it. As Rath explains to GamesRadar+, he can't do both, and failure to pass the damage check means the fight is over.

The eventual solution? Huge damage. As Rath points out, Susano will initiate the sword phase when he's at 40% health or three minutes into the fight. At that point, you've got around 14 seconds to avoid defeat – or, 14 seconds you could theoretically take him out in with a burst window mighty enough.

Rath identified the new Pictomancer job as just the job to put out the damage he needed, but he still fell slightly short. One of the main issues is that he couldn't utilize the Echo buff given to players who fail multiple times as he simply wasn't surviving the fight for long enough – considering the buff helps out with damage and healing potency, it proves invaluable for a solo run like this.

Stumped, Rath put out a 50 million gil bounty to anyone who could chart the way forward and was essentially rewarded the same day. The Pictomancer has an ability called Star Prism that heals for 400 potency, theoretically giving the